America First Legal (AFL) has announced it is suing the US Department of State, its Agency for International Development (USAID), and the US Department of Commerce.
The lawsuit has been filed in the District Court for the District of Columbia, the non-profit said. AFL is accusing the three government entities of withholding documents that may reveal the US government’s “involvement in recent global efforts to suppress free speech.”
The two instances of this possible behavior highlighted in the filing are the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in France, and censorship affecting social media in Brazil.
The goal of the lawsuit is to compel the defendants to comply with AFL’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests regarding these issues.
A blog post explained the nature of Telegram as a secure, encrypted app, and the circumstances of Durov’s arrest and the French authorities’ accusations against him and the platform, noting that in the wake of the arrest, AFL decided to investigate whether the Biden-Harris Administration played any role, or had knowledge of what would happen ahead of time.
According to AFL, because of Durov’s status and the way the case against him could affect free speech globally, “there is significant reason to believe” that the current White House may indeed have been involved (in either, or both ways.)
The issue with Brazil, as referenced in this lawsuit, has to do with the affair involving the blocking of X, and ongoing censorship of political speech in that country, most often under the guise of fighting “disinformation and fake news” – and whether the US administration had any role there as well.
AFL cites a recent report by one of the Twitter Files journalists, Michael Shellenberger, who mentions the US funding of efforts leading to censorship as well as advising the Brazilian authorities in this regard.
“Government censorship and attacks on free speech are fundamentally anti-American. The American people “and the world”” must know if the Biden-Harris Administration supported or coordinated with the Brazilian government to censor an American social media company committed to upholding free speech,” the AFL article announcing the lawsuit stressed.
All of this prompted the non-profit to investigate and file FOIA requests to gain access to relevant communications or records, but those requests have so far been ignored by the government.
“The American people have every right to know whether their government and their taxpayer dollars are being used to suppress free speech around the world,” AFL Executive Director Gene Hamilton said in a statement.
